


Banks of Lethe

by Laylah



Category: Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga
Genre: Character of Color, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-15
Updated: 2009-11-15
Packaged: 2017-10-02 23:02:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laylah/pseuds/Laylah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the dream that he has that night, Lupa is broad-shouldered, deep-voiced, certain. His face is streaked white with paint, and his eyes glow rich copper.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Banks of Lethe

They all have strange dreams. That's just been a fact of life, growing up, like the fact that they all live together like a family, even though Fred says that he's not their father, and they're not brothers and sisters. Mostly they don't tell anyone else about the dreams, though sometimes when they're still children Heat will tell a particularly gory one to the girls at school over lunch.

For the most part, though, they only share the dreams among themselves, comparing notes until it is impossible to tell whether they all had the same dreams originally, or whether they have taught each other the features they have in common: the empty city where it always rains, the proper way to strip and reassemble a rifle, the way that anyone, at any time, could turn out to be a monster. Some of the dreams could be based on real things, history from just a short time before they were born -- the years of the Black Sun and Cuvier's Syndrome. But they began having the dreams before any of them were old enough to read history books.

And there are some that they do not share at all. Gale has never asked Sera or Cielo if they also dream of Heat grown so monstrous and hungry that he has swallowed Serph whole, if they dream of fighting their way through his flesh to find Serph again. Shared dreams feel too certain, and that one, where they have turned on each other instead of fighting side by side, should not be made any more real.

In the day time, away from the dreams of blood and magic and power, they manage to be, for the most part, normal. They go to school and go on vacations and play sports, and Sera takes ballet and Serph learns to play the piano and Cielo joins the drama club, and there are days when they won't speak to each other for one reason or another, but they never cease to be friends. Comrades.

University is the first time they don't all live under the same roof. They still see each other frequently for meals and sometimes even for classes, but they no longer share rooms or chores. The difference is probably healthy, Gale thinks; he is studying psychology, and one of the few things on which all the schools agree is that adult development requires forming attachments outside the family unit. Still, it's not an entirely comfortable adjustment, and he's fairly certain his roommate doesn't know what to make of him.

He meets Lupa in one of his classes -- an ethics seminar that he is taking to fulfill one of his electives. Their first conversation is more an argument than anything else, but Gale finds it exhilarating, to his own surprise. He leaves the classroom feeling alert, focused, turning ideas over in his head in ways that he hadn't expected.

In the dream that he has that night, Lupa is broad-shouldered, deep-voiced, certain. His face is streaked white with paint, and his eyes glow rich copper. He is proud, strong, and terrible. The things he says make Gale restless and unsettled in his skin.

It's the second half of the dream that wakes him, though, the hollow darkness and the great fallen beast before him, the low growling voice that is almost Lupa's. Gale wakes tasting blood, the air in his room too hot, the blankets suffocating. He stumbles out of bed and down the hall to the shared bathroom, where he doesn't turn the lights on, just curls up on the floor in the showers and listens to the drip-drip of water from the one tap that won't turn off.

Nobody apart from the seven of them has ever shown up in the dreams before. Not dreams like this, the ones they all have. Gale doesn't know what to make of it. He'd developed some kind of faith in the dreams, he realizes; he expects them to give him truth, instead of the unwieldy tangle of memory and desire that his textbooks tell him is normal.

He gets back to sleep once he's had time to calm down, but he's still tired the next day, off balance, his thoughts slowed and blurred. He's quieter in his classes than usual for the rest of the week.

Lupa turns up in his dreams again, more than once; the same dreams, the same charismatic and...honorable mercenary, strange as that concept is. He speaks of alliances and honor and truth, and a threat against which none of them can stand. After the fourth time, Gale broaches the subject with Argilla one evening when the two of them are eating together. Sharing meals seems to matter strongly to all of them.

He describes the dreams, and the new figure in them, but does not provide a name; when Argilla already knows, can already say, _Lupa_, Gale believes this must matter. When she goes on to describe the dreams that she has been having, the sad-voiced woman with the haunted eyes, Gale likewise knows -- though he cannot say how -- that she speaks of _Jinana_. He feels relieved, when they part ways, as though he has found the solution to a complicated problem.

After class, the next week, he stops Lupa in the shadow of the building. "Lupa," Gale says. "I need to talk to you."

Lupa pauses; his expression is curious and calm, and his eyes have the same brilliant intensity that Gale remembers from the dreams. "Gale. What do you need?"

It's still awkward to say. "I've been...having dreams." Lupa goes very still, and that somehow makes it easier to continue. "Tunnels. Waterways under a city where the rain never stops. Battles that...."

"Battles that determine the fighter's humanity," Lupa supplies, when he hesitates. "Colors that are entirely muted. Striving for...paradise?"

"Nirvana," Gale says, and is certain once he says it that it's true. "Competing for the chance to reach Nirvana."

Lupa nods. "Yes. Nirvana." He holds Gale's gaze steadily. "Not dreams, perhaps, but memories."

"I...believe so," Gale says.

"There was something we did not do, in that life," Lupa says. "Something unresolved between us."

Gale nods. There is certainly tension now, a kind of magnetism between them. When Lupa closes the distance between them, he does not retreat.

Lupa kisses him, slow and thorough, uncompromising. "Something like that?" he asks, afterward.

Gale's heart is pounding. "Not only that," he says. "But that is...a very good start."


End file.
